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Australia’s First (British) Musical Import: The ‘Rogue’s March’

The British Union Flag was first raised on Australian soil on 26 January 1788. Although it is highly probable that the event at Port Jackson was marked with musical accompaniment from the first fleet’s small contingent of military fife and drum marines, no accounts exist to show that this occurred. Instead, Australia’s first recorded musical event took place two weeks later on 9 February – it was a far less auspicious occasion. For being found among the women’s tents, a marine sailor suffered the indignity of being ‘drum’d out of the Camp’ to the strains of the ‘Rogue’s March’. As a further insult to the new colony, two days later three civilians were caught in identical compromising positions and suffered the same punishment accompanied, again, by the ‘Rogue’s March’. Given the unique position of the tune in Australian history as its first acknowledged British musical import and performance, the ‘Rogue’s March’ and its British and colonial associations with public spectacle, punishment

and humiliation, both in military and civilian life, demands its own short history.

The ‘Rogue’s March’ first appeared in print in about 1750 in Rutherfoord’s Compleat Tutor for the Fife. The tune’s military credentials were established with its second appearance, this time in Thompson’s Compleat Tutor (c1759), the title of which continues with references to the Celebrated March’s and Airs Perform’d in the Guards and other Regiments &c. From Thompson’s Tutor on, the ‘Rogue’s March’ became firmly attached to ritual processes in the British army, the Royal Navy and their camp followers’ lives. The monotonous drum beat that often accompanied the fifes (but which could be played solo in place of the melody as a drum command) first appeared in print in 1780

when Longman and Broderip issued separate fife and drum tutors containing the tune. Based on these sources, Ex. 1 shows the tune as it may have been played in the first weeks of Britain’s new colony.

Centre for the History of Music in Britain, the Empire and the Commonwealth

CHOMBEC is based at the Department of Music, University of Bristol

News

ISSN 1751-3308

Issue no 13 Editor: Fabian Huss

Summer 2012

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/music/chombec

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Ex. 1 ‘Rogue’s March’

Beyond these eighteenth-century publications, the origins of the melody for the ‘Rogue’s March’ are unclear. One idea is that it is based on Thomas Dibdin’s 1797 stage song, ‘The Snug Little Island’. But although Dibdin’s appropriated melody – the dance-tune, ‘Joan’s Placket’ – clearly relates to a later 6/8 version of a similar tune also referred to as the ‘Rogue’s March’, the jollity of Dibdin’s melody seems inappropriate for its use as an accompaniment to public ridicule and military corporal punishment, unless used in a mocking manner. Alternatively, Winstock (1970) offers a plausible suggestion for the origins of the ‘Rogue’s March’: that it derives from ‘Cuckolds Come Dig’, a civilian drummed accompaniment to public floggings and ridicule.

Although there is no surviving music to Winstock’s proposed source, the circumstantial evidence is promising. Winstock himself supports his case by

referring to an incident in Edinburgh in 1736 in which ‘Nine Wenches of the Town’ were paraded through the city, ‘Drums beating, Cuckolds come dig!’ He might also have turned to the 1705 play, The Lunatick, which ties ‘Cuckolds Come Dig’ to a punishment flogging, or to the use of the putative source as a part of the ‘Soldier’s Medley’, a song popular in songsters of the second half of the eighteenth century. Musically, the link remains promising and the drumbeat to ‘Cuckolds Come Dig’ (Ex. 2) bears clear similarities to the later tune. The same rhythm also matches the words of a doggerel army song referred to as the ‘Rogue’s March’ (second vocal line, Ex. 2) although this song is not infrequently attached to the alternative, Dibdinian, 6/8 time signature.

Ex. 2 ‘Cuckolds Come Dig’

In 1788 in Port Jackson, the ‘Rogue’s March’ was being used, like ‘Cuckolds Come Dig’ before it, to ridicule and degrade its target. Accepting that early Australian society was subjected to constant surveillance, coercion, frequent arrest and force, one means of encouraging compliance with authority was to turn punishment into theatrical spectacle. The spectacle could in turn be enhanced, and audience expectation

heightened, by attaching a ‘ceremonial’ tune to the proceedings; in the ritual of drumming out, this was the ‘Rogue’s March’.

For the military miscreant, the spectacle of drumming out consisted of as many drummers and fifers as possible parading the offender at bayonet-point along the front of the regimental formation as the Rogue’s March’ was played. The offender’s uniform

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would either be turned inside out or the facings, buttons and any other mark of rank or distinction would be cut off thus removing the honourable status the jacket had previously given them. Their hands would be bound behind their back and accounts commonly record that a rope ‘halter’ was also tied around the neck. The significance of the halter remains unexplained, but the frequent reference to it as a ‘noose’ suggests that the rope was symbolic of the hangman’s rope and of guilt. The final ignominy was a kick in the ‘breech’ (backside) from the youngest drummer in the regiment as the offender was banished from the camp. Hughes Myerley (1996) further suggests that the use of the drummer applied yet another degree of degradation because the drummer was not a fighting soldier and was therefore the lowliest member of the regiment: signaller drummers were ‘field musicians’ and their only duty was to transmit battle commands and not to entertain. Certainly, if the wrong-doer was also to be flogged, the drummer (in a foot regiment), farrier (in the cavalry), or bugler (in rifle regiments) was called upon to perform that duty too. Camus (1976), it must be admitted, contradicts Hughes Myerley’s assessment of the drummer’s lowly status, yet it was the case that in 1846 in Hobart, farriers were still being used to flog soldiers within their regiment. At least the punished men in 1846 were not ejected from the town; in February 1788, drumming out was a harsh punishment given that there was nowhere for the expelled to go but the bush.

However severe expulsion from the putative settlement of Port Jackson in 1788 was, the ‘Rogue’s March’ was also an accompaniment to far more unpleasant forms of punishment for Britain’s military forces. For the navy, the tune and drumbeat was synonymous with the punishment known as ‘flogging around the fleet’. Employing the cat-o’-nine tails to extreme effect, the condemned man was tied to a ship’s timber mounted in a rowing boat and rowed from ship to ship where he was beaten, the number of prescribed lashes being equally distributed between each ship. Opinion is divided as to whether this punishment resulted in death. The alternative view says that where the beating was deemed to be in danger of killing the man, he was rescued and treated for his wounds. However, once he was sufficiently recovered, the punishment was begun again until all of the lashes had been applied. The army also performed similar beatings on its men in which they were tied to a tripod of halberds (pikes) in the field. Any man imprisoned in Australia could also suffer the same fate; surprisingly, such floggings continued in Freemantle Prison until 1943. Less severe punishments to the same tune could apply to civilians living under military law or within military encampments, just as they had in Port Jackson in 1788: in 1801 Francis Grose referred to the ‘The Rogues, or Whores March’ and described it as ‘[being] beaten and played by the fifes when . . . common prostitutes are drummed out of the camp or garrison.’ Again, the implied link to ‘Cuckolds Come Dig’ seems obvious.

The ceremonial renditions of the ‘Rogue’s March’ in Port Jackson in 1788 were not isolated incidents. Throughout the nineteenth century in Britain, Australia, the Empire and the Commonwealth, drumming out and punishment floggings were noted in diaries and in the newspapers. Almost certainly these notices only accounted for a fraction of the real number of occasions when the fife and drums were called upon to sound their duty. That a British tradition should be found, entirely unaltered, in the new settlements of Australia is not in the least bit surprising; British tradition – military and civilian, secular and ecclesiastic (but less so, elite and popular) – was imported wholesale to the fledgling communities of Australia. But the survival of prisoner floggings, which survived far beyond the temporal boundaries of similar punishments in Britain, is peculiar to the convict communities of Australia. Although Jordan’s apt description of early Australia as having a ‘freakish social structure’ is clearly true of the period of transportation (1788-1868), the extremes of convictism had most certainly been lost long before 1943. Appropriately for the ‘Rogue’s March’, the title is now as commonly applied to the military 2/4 of the early fife Tutors as it is to a more enlivening version of Dibdin’s 6/8 popular song.

Nick Nourse

Cover illustration from Thompson’s Compleat Tutor

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News and Events

Retirement of Stephen Banfield

John Pickard This is the last issue of CHOMBEC News to go to press before its Founder and first Director, Stephen Banfield, retires. He will be leaving Bristol University on 31 December and I am sure that all Friends and associates of CHOMBEC will want to join me in wishing him a long and happy retirement. When Stephen joined Bristol’s Music Department in 2003 as Stanley Hugh Badock Professor of Music, he very quickly recognised the potential of this unique locality as the home of a centre for research not just in British music, but in investigating how Empire and Commonwealth have shaped – and continue to shape – the cultural, and especially the musical, life of this country and beyond.

The result, CHOMBEC, now in its seventh year, is an intellectual centre that is open-minded and sympathetic to a huge range of different musical styles and genres – in that sense it is a true reflection of the spirit of its founder. I know of no-one else who combines Stephen’s sharp critical acumen with such profound knowledge of the highways and byways (particularly the byways) of all types of music in Britain, the Empire and the Commonwealth. He is also one of those musical academics who really loves music, delighting in the sheer joy of the noise it makes and the effect it has on those who perform and listen to it. For me, it has been a privilege and a pleasure this past decade to work closely with him and to enjoy so many illuminating discussions with him.

The past couple of years have seen the administrative role of Head of the School of Arts taking up much of Stephen’s time and attention. Consequently his involvement with CHOMBEC has necessarily been less hands-on than it was. As so-called ‘retirement’ beckons, I think we can confidently predict a new surge of activity in his research – indeed, a major work is already partly written (I count myself fortunate to have read substantial parts of it). It promises to distil much of the research he has undertaken during the decade he has been at Bristol. We wish Stephen well for that, thank him for all he has given to CHOMBEC and to the musical and intellectual life of Bristol University, and wish him every happiness in the future.

Conference report: papers on British music at the Society for Musicology in

Ireland annual conference, Dundalk, June 2012

Fabian Huss

The tenth annual conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland took place in Dundalk, on 15-17 June 2012. There were numerous papers on British music, including my own, on Frank Bridge and modernism in Britain. Papers on Julius Benedict, William Mason, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and the early years of jazz in Northern Ireland stand out particularly.

Fiona Palmer (National University of Ireland, Maynooth) presented a fascinating paper on conductor, pianist and composer Julius Benedict. Besides conducting at the Norwich Festival between 1845 and 1978 and being conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society from 1867 to 1880, Benedict is notable for his biographies of Mendelssohn and Weber, and his opera The Lily of Killarney. Palmer’s outline of his career was used as a basis for a consideration of the conducting marketplace in Britain – something that was only beginning to take a definite shape during this period – and related social contexts.

John Cunningham (University of Bangor) discussed ‘Mason’s Caractacus on the British Stage’, beginning with background information on the extended dramatic poem. This was modelled on Greek tragedy and tied in with a trend whereby ‘the study of British antiquity had begun to shift from a peripheral area to a central antiquarian concern’. Cunningham then proceeded to explore the settings made by Garrett Wesley (Earl of Mornington), Charles Wesley and a further anonymous setting, as well as Mason’s stage version with incidental music by Thomas Arne (now lost). He speculated that the anonymous setting may have been the work of Mason himself, as he was a competent musician, and the additional text used there is in keeping with the style of the original material.

John Snyder (University of Houston, Texas) gave a paper on Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and exoticism, considering different models of musical exoticism before discussing examples of the many instances of exoticism in Coleridge-Taylor’s music, from Negro spirituals and African tunes to Native American and Japanese subjects. It is interesting to note that Coleridge-Taylor’s own ethnic background tended not to be over-emphasised in contemporary reception. Rather, Snyder suggested that there may have been instances of ‘attributed exoticism’, where commentators considered elements of his music as being exotic, sometimes with little justification – for instance in the

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description of certain emphatic passages as ‘barbaric’ (in a positive sense).

Ruth Stanley’s paper on ‘Jazz and the Dance Craze in Northern Ireland during the 1920s and 30s’ explored the burgeoning popularity of the genre as well as the role of BBC Northern Ireland in its popularisation. Discussion began with a fascinating comparison with the spread of jazz in the Irish Free State, where a concerted anti-jazz campaign, carried out by the Catholic Church and the Gaelic League, revealed a stifling focus on the assertion of cultural and religious identity. Northern Ireland, by contrast, benefited from its connections with Britain and the BBC. While largely following British trends, there were also some interesting local deviations, for instance the presence of Irish folk music in the repertory of some dance bands.

Theatre Histories / Music Histories Series, University of Bristol

Catherine Hindson

The research seminar series Theatre Histories / Music Histories was launched in the autumn of 2011 by Professor Stephen Banfield (music) and Dr Catherine Hindson (drama). Through research talks and workshops the series aims to bring together music and theatre historians to talk about their shared histories. In 2011-2012 research talks have been given by Dr Dominic Symonds (University of Porstmouth) on ‘Rodgers and Hart: a London odyssey, 1926-1930’, and by Dr Jane Milling (University of Exeter) on ‘Revitalising the prom: popular history and performance at the seaside’.

To finish the year’s events, we ran a productive and interesting workshop in early June. Papers were given by Dr Nick Nourse (post-doc in music), on the one-person show, and Celia Durk (a current PhD student supervised by Banfield and Hindson), on the West End stage musical composer and song writer Lionel Monckton. Discussions focused on approaches to histories that cross established disciplinary boundaries and the challenges and questions raised by working in such an area.

We are open to ideas and suggestions for the series next year. So, if there is anyone you know of working across the intersections between music and theatre histories, please do contact Nick Nourse on n.nourse@bristol.ac.uk.

The English Music Festival 2012

Em Marshall-Luck The Sixth English Music, held in and around Dorchester-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, drew pleasingly decent audiences over the Jubilee weekend. We were proud to present the world premiere performances of a number of important works, primarily a song by Ivor Gurney, Vaughan Williams’s Piano Fantasia and Moeran’s Second Symphony – the latter two performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra with Martin Yates conducting and Mark Bebbington the soloist in the Vaughan Williams. This, our opening concert, was broadcast live on Radio 3. Other highlights of the festival included Garlands for the Two Elizabeths, wherein the Joyful Company of Singers presented English choral gems from Morley to Tippett, via Britten, Finzi and Howells; the concert world premiere of Elgar’s complete incidental music to Binyon’s Arthur, in an Arthurian programme also featuring Purcell’s King Arthur and Britten’s Sword in the Stone, and with EMF vice-president Robert Hardy narrating in inimitable style; and the Jaguar Band filling the Abbey with the strains of Alwyn, Fletcher, Bliss, Arnold and Bantock. (Howells’s Pageantry in this programme was a personal favourite, although the Forty-Ninth Parallel brought tears to a number in the audience behind me!)

Contemporary music complemented the music of earlier eras, with composers including Arthur Butterworth, John Pickard, Lionel Sainsbury and Paul Carr, and for light relief The Songmen provided a programme that interspersed early music with popular and nostalgic songs, and the Mellstock Band entertained audiences with songs and stories from Hardy’s Wessex. Personal favourites? My husband performing Elgar’s Violin Sonata; the superb Moeran Symphony; Holst’s Planets thrillingly played with four hands on one piano; Delius’s Seven Danish Songs – an absolute revelation and exquisitely sung by Elena Xanthoudakis; Elgar’s incredibly moving Fringes of the Fleet (something I have always wanted to programme), and the joy of standing up with friends old and new alike and singing our hearts out in Soldiers of the Queen and Keep the Homes Fires Burning...

The Festival opened with our first-night party, attended by members of the Friends scheme, press, artists and English Music Festival vice-presidents, at which our latest enterprise, EM Publishing, was launched. We also held launches for our most recent two EM Records discs, of Norman O’Neill chamber music played by the Bridge Quartet (String Quartet in C major, Piano Quintet in E minor, and Piano Trios), and works for violin and piano played by Rupert Marshall-Luck and Matthew Rickard (Vaughan Williams’s Sonata in A minor, Holst’s Five Pieces, and Walford Davies’s

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Sonata in E flat major). As always at the EMF, the atmosphere was very friendly and close-knit, with many members of the audience forging new friendships over a pint in the pub or during our Festival lunch, or delighting in meeting old acquaintances again.

Relocation of Robert Lucas Pearsall’s Gravestone

Bristol Chamber Choir has raised funds for the relocation of Robert Lucas Pearsall’s gravestone. Their musical director, Gordon Pullin, explains the situation: Robert Lucas Pearsall lived at Schloss Wartensee in Switzerland between 1843 and his death in 1856. His family was subsequently declared bankrupt and had to sell the castle and all its contents. Pearsall had been buried in the chapel there, and in front of the altar was a gravestone bearing this inscription:

In the vault beneath repose the remains of Robert Lucas de Pearsall Esquire of Willsbridge House in the County of Glocester England and of this Castle of Wartensee in the Cant. St Gall, Switzerland. Born in Clifton in the County of Glocester March 1795 and died at this castle 5 August 1856. Requiescat in Pace.

In 1957, Pearsall’s remains were transferred to the Roman Catholic chapel at Wilen-Wartegg, where a new memorial was put up. What had become of the original gravestone? In recent months, thanks to Donald Gugan and James Hobson, we discovered that it was languishing in a shed in the grounds of Schloss Wartensee and was destined for landfill. As a result, Bristol Chamber Choir – the successor and still ‘under the auspices of' Bristol Madrigal Society’, of which Pearsall was a founder-member – contacted Father Lukas of Einsiedeln Abbey, where many of Pearsall’s manuscripts remain, and the gravestone was temporarily housed in the stonemasons’ yard there. We also contacted St Mary’s Church in Bitton, Pearsall’s

parish church, where his great friend, the Revd HT Ellacombe was the vicar; Pearsall also donated the pulpit. To our delight, the present vicar and churchwardens were eager to give a permanent home to the gravestone in their churchyard.

The gravestone has now safely

arrived, and was officially 'welcomed/blessed' at the concert there on Saturday 30 June, given by the Bristol Chamber Choir. Our initial appeal for funding elicited an excellent response and we have covered the cost of transporting the stone from Einsiedeln to Bitton. Our next task is to protect it, as it was originally inside the chapel at Wartensee, so it will need some sort of covering. We are also updating the 'Memorial Board', such as it is, inside the church, which will eventually have the names of all those who have contributed to this project. If by any chance we eventually end up with a surplus we intend to create a separate fund for the up-keep of both gravestone and board. The choir will be going to Einsiedeln next April to give recitals there and also in the Abbey at St Gallen, where Pearsall was organist.

Research Reports

English Music in the Festival of Britain’s London Season of the Arts

Nathaniel G Lew

In May and June 1951, as part of the Festival of Britain, the Arts Council of Great Britain mounted the London Season of the Arts, an eight-week extravaganza which included almost 200 classical music concerts. Arts Council staff such as Music Director John Denison, Assistant Secretary Eric Walter White, and Herbert Murrill, specially hired to organize the London Season’s music, advocated for British repertory with performers, threatened to withhold grants if programmes didn’t suit them, and put on their own series of concerts. As a result, English music was represented in the concerts with unprecedented breadth of coverage. The National Archive in Kew holds concert programmes from nearly all the musical events. Excluding theatrical works that received multiple performances, the over 750 performances of concert works by British composers given during the London Season of the Arts together paint a vivid picture of the canon of British music as it stood in 1951.

Although Murrill and the Arts Council staff committed themselves to catholicity, conventional mid-twentieth-century historiography dominates the results. Although one of the Arts Council’s special series, planned in-house, presented English music from 1350 to 1750, medieval music largely awaited rediscovery. The works on offer fell into a Tudor Golden Age, a burst

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of Purcellian glory – Henry Purcell merited a series of his own with sixty-nine separate works – a Handelian interlude, and then the so-called English Musical Renaissance, extending into the contemporary period. The only modest surprises are the multiple works by John Blow and, later, Matthew Arne and William Boyce, all of whom were featured in the early music series. An underrepresentation, indeed almost total lack, of Georgian and Victorian music is to be expected in 1951, although the few figures performed show where knowledge and interest had been preserved or were beginning to take root. For instance, the third special series, jointly presented with the BBC, purported to present English song from the Renaissance through the present. But despite its claims of breadth, the series included just five works from the period of more than a century between Arne and C Hubert H Parry: songs by William Boyce, James Hook, Thomas Linley Jr, Henry Bishop, and John Hatton.

Records of performances of sacred music are necessarily incomplete. During the London Season, the choirs of Westminster Cathedral and Westminster Abbey both gave well documented concert series, and archives record other works performed in concert, but not the anthems and service music chosen by the many London church choirs or even the concert series at the Festival Church, St John Waterloo. If such church music lists were available, sacred composers from the Tudor period and the ‘English Musical Renaissance’ would of course rank even higher. The numbers for the nineteenth century would also rise, since the Church preserved a certain amount of nineteenth-century music (for example, by Samuel and Samuel Sebastian Wesley) when almost nothing remained in the secular concert repertory. Even in the absence of such records, however, compositions from before the year 1650 comprise over a quarter of all the works performed in the London Season of the Arts. Although most of these works are short, that is still an impressive share for a festival in the early 1950s, and testifies both to a growing awareness and acceptance of early music, a willingness to recover music from ‘lost’ periods in English music history, and the missionary zeal of the Arts Council, in planning the early music series, and Basil Lam, the scholar and broadcaster who organized it.

Except in the case of Purcell and arguably, William Byrd (given the extensive coverage he received in the Early Music series), the Arts Council’s broadening of the national repertory consisted mostly of the rehabilitation of unperformed composers, not works. In other words, the concerts included mostly better-known works by as many composers as possible, rather than neglected works of acknowledged masters. Thus there were multiple performances of the symphonic works and late oratorios of Edward Elgar, but the piano quintet was his only chamber work, and Sea Pictures the only earlier

vocal-orchestral work. Younger contemporary composers were represented by the compositions they wrote specifically for the Festival, older and more established ones by their most familiar works (e.g. Ralph Vaughan Williams’s symphonies, John Ireland’s piano concerto and cantata These Things Shall Be) The same principle applied to the song series, in which, although there were novelties, composers tended to be represented by their best-known works. Frank Howes, the music critic for the London Times, registered his support for this approach when he opined, somewhat in jest, that the only important British composer whose works were not adequately represented in Festival programs was Granville Bantock.

Purcell, because of the entire series devoted to him, received the largest number of individual works performed – over eighty – followed by Byrd, Vaughan Williams, and Elgar. Dividing the lists into ‘Ancients’ and ‘Moderns’, Charles Villiers Stanford (with eight works) and Charles Wood (five) are the Moderns most performed in the two cathedral series. Purcell (eight songs), John Dowland (four songs) and, perhaps unusually for 1951, Arne (five songs) are the Ancients most performed in the song series.

Of the top-ranking Moderns in the table of regular concerts (orchestral, choral and chamber concerts not included in a themed series), about half were still alive during the Festival of Britain, and indeed about a quarter of all the works performed in the London Season were by living composers, an impressive showing. The list of top-ranking living composers is predictably headed by Vaughan Williams, William Walton, Arnold Bax, and Benjamin Britten. John Ireland, in next place, perhaps stands out since, for whatever reason, his stature has fallen below the others since 1950. However, numerical analysis of concert programs is only a rough tool, and in some cases can be misleading. Stanford appears to do well, with eleven concert works performed, but these were mostly short choral works; Songs of the Fleet and Songs of the Sea were his only major concert works included in the London Season.

Handel’s third-place position overall, with seventeen separate works performed, is similarly boosted by shorter works or works performed only in part. Messiah and Solomon were the only oratorios presented in full, although with two complete performances and excerpts on two other concerts, Messiah was one of the most often heard works. It is not clear whether Murrill’s committee discouraged performances of other Handel oratorios, or if choral societies didn’t even propose them. Of course, one must also take into account the varying length of works for different composers. All nineteen of Dowland’s works heard on the Early Music series would together take up less time than a single Handel oratorio. For

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total performance time Handel may indeed have been in first place.

Even so, the performance statistics demonstrate graphically the demise of the historical Handel cult, perhaps even squeamishness on the part of post-war Britons about claiming him as British in the first place. The vigorous promotion of Purcell in his own series – the only composer so honored – suggests that by mid-century, the strategy of replacing Handel with Purcell as The Representative English Baroque Master was well established. Indeed, at the Festival of Britain Three Choirs Festival in Worcester, Handel and Mendelssohn were largely laid aside (all but Messiah), and every concert included a work by a British composer. The large repertory of English choral works included Elgar’s Kingdom and The Dream of Gerontius, Vaughan Williams’s Sancta Civitas, Holst’s Hymn of Jesus, Finzi’s Intimations of Immortality, and Howells’s Hymnus Paradisi.

Most works were heard only once. Several concert works did receive multiple performances, all easily explained. Aside from Messiah and Festival commissions such as William Alwyn’s Festival March and George Dyson’s Song for a Festival, the most-performed concert works were by Elgar. The Enigma Variations received four performances, Cockaigne and the Introduction and Allegro for strings received three, as did Vaughan Wiliams’s Benedicite and Tallis Fantasia, and Holst’s ballet music from The Perfect Fool. All of these are popular orchestral showpieces except for Benedicite, a moderate-length work less challenging than a full-scale oratorio and thus well suited for second-tier choruses.

In summary, although there were few major surprises, the London Season of the Arts was an extraordinary undertaking. The Arts Council undertook to define the canon of English concert music, to broaden it, and to perform as much of it as practical considerations would allow. The timing of the task was opportune and the institution well suited to it. By the early fifties, it was possible to confidently take stock of what British composers had accomplished, particularly over the preceding seventy-five years, as well as what had been rediscovered from earlier eras. The Festival of Britain offered an opportunity to organize on a grand scale. And the Arts Council of Great Britain was a young organization at the first peak of its influence and resources, with an energetic staff eager to guide the nation’s cultural life and display its musical patrimony. In the London Season of the Arts, they mounted the largest festival of English music in history. Nathaniel G Lew (St Michael’s College, Colchester VT) is Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professor at the University of Bristol, 2012.

Music in the Mander and Mitchenson Theatre Collection

Christopher O’Brien

In February 2011 the University of Bristol’s Theatre Collection acquired the Mander and Mitchenson Theatre Collection. The M&M comprises some 3,000 boxes of theatrical memorabilia, including 30 to 40 boxes of printed and manuscript music. Over the past six months I have been spending one morning a week gradually working my way through the boxes of music, cataloguing the contents on to a spreadsheet that will eventually, it is hoped, be made available in a publicly accessible catalogue. So far, I have catalogued the contents of 26 boxes, which contain some 1,400 pieces of music. Obviously there is still a lot of work to be done, but the following article gives an impression of the type of musical material dealt with so far.

Most of the music can be divided into three categories – operetta and musical comedy vocal scores; music hall songs, monologues and comic songs; popular songs and ballads, particularly dance songs of the 1920s and 1930s. The majority of the music was published in the period 1890 to 1940, although there are a few examples that go back to the 1820s.

The published vocal-piano scores and piano selections of operettas, musical comedies and musical revues mostly date from between the 1870s and 1930s. There are several commemorative editions of vocal scores, such as one produced for the 779th performance of The Maid of the Mountains on 9 December 1918, which includes numerous special photographs of the producer, authors and cast (although the foreword is dated 10 February 1919, the second anniversary performance). There are also two vocal scores, Careless Rapture and The Dancing Years, autographed by the composer Ivor Novello. Perhaps the most interesting vocal score is one that was used as a conductor’s score for the original production of Lionel Monckton and Howard Talbot’s The Arcadians at the Gaiety Theatre in 1909. The score, which is autographed on three pages by members of the London cast, is marked up in red with orchestral cues, rehearsal marks, cuts and numerous musical additions, either written in to the score or on manuscript paper that has been tipped in. There are also a number of production notes, such as an alteration made to one number when Cicely Courtneidge took over the role of Eileen Cavanagh in 1910. One box contains a run of the periodical Music for All from 1922 to 1927, each issue of which concentrates on a hit musical of the time, giving a synopsis of the story, numerous production photographs and a number of songs from the featured show.

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The collection is very strong on music hall songs and musical monologues. Annual collections of music hall and comic songs include Francis and Day’s Comic Annual, Sheard’s Comic and Variety Annual, Patey and Willis’s Dance Album, dating from 1883 until the early 1900s. There are also series of albums containing songs performed by music hall stars of the day, such as Albert Chevalier and Vesta Tilley, and numerous musical monologues published by Reynolds & Co. Perhaps the most important collections of music hall songs are those that belonged to and were performed by Billy Bennett (1887-1942) and Charles Penrose (1873-1952). Split amongst three boxes is a collection of orchestral parts to about 18 songs by Billy Bennett, many of which are incomplete. There are also published songs and manuscript orchestral parts for songs performed by Charles Penrose include numerous ‘laughing’ songs, most famously ‘The Laughing Policeman’. Two folders belonging to Penrose contain typescript and manuscript copies of song lyrics, some showing pencil alterations, as well as a few links and scripts for radio programmes that Penrose broadcast on the BBC’s Forces Network during the war. The orchestration for most of both Bennett’s and Penrose’s songs appear to have been for a small theatre orchestra comprising anything from four to no more than twenty players, with any combination of strings, woodwind, brass (particularly saxophones), drums, banjo, accordion and piano.

Perhaps the most intriguing sets of orchestral parts relate to the actress Ada Reeve (1874-1966). All of the music appears to have been composed by JA Robertson for shows featuring Reeve. There appears to be a complete set of principal vocal parts and an incomplete set of orchestral and choral parts for Moll, the Rogue (1905), first performed in Manchester and later revived in Cheltenham. There are only two orchestral parts, double bass and harp, for another Reeve vehicle, Butterflies (1908). Finally, there is an incomplete sets of parts for the song ‘Foolish Questions’ and a first violin part for another song, ‘Experience’, both of which may have been sung by Reeve in the London revival of Winnie Brooke, Widow (1917?) in which she interpolated popular songs from her repertoire. There are other boxes relating to Ada Reeve within the M&M collection, and it could be that the missing orchestral parts may be found there.

The numerous song sheets in the M&M collection range from popular ballads of the late Victorian and Edwardian era up until the Second World War, although there are a number of examples of printed music from the 1820s. One box in particular contains a large selection of 1920s American popular song sheets, particularly for dances such as the fox-trot and the two-step.

Dating the publication of some of the music has been particularly difficult, and this is not confined to

undated manuscripts. Although many published pieces of music have copyright dates on them, this need not necessarily be the date of publication. There are a number of examples of the same piece published by the same publisher, either in a different paper size or with a different cover but all bearing the same date. Similarly, there are many examples of published music where no date is given at all. In these latter cases I have checked to see if there are copies in the British Library, as the library catalogue sometimes provides a date (possibly of acquisition) rather than no date at all. However, there have been numerous instances where the piece in question does not appear to be in the library’s catalogue, meaning that the copy in the Mander and Mitchenson Collection is potentially unique. The work of cataloguing the collection is far from complete and who knows what hidden treasures it may yet reveal.

From our Corresponding

Members

The Music and Musicians of Bath’s Eighteenth-Century Proprietary Chapels

Matthew Spring, Bath Spa University

A longer version of this paper was given at the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference, St Hugh’s College, January 2012

One aspect of Bath’s changing urban environment in the second half of the eighteenth century was the proliferation of proprietary chapels. St Mary’s, Queen’s Square, was completed in 1735 as Bath’s first proprietary chapel. The second half of the century saw a spate of Anglican chapel building – including the Octagon, Christ Church, St Margaret’s, Laura and Kensington Chapels – all within easy distance of each other. In fashionable areas these proprietary chapels were built for the leisured visitors and run on a commercial basis, with fireplaces and private alcoves, and were aimed more at women than men. Some like the Octagon and Laura were of architectural interest and were frequented by the gentry, others like Christ Church were aimed more at the town’s poor who were excluded by the renting of pews. Most were in decline by the mid-nineteenth century, and were put to other uses or suffered demolition.

The chapels made a feature of the music that could be heard as part of the services, and/or the fame of the

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preachers that were engaged. Famously, William Herschel was drawn to Bath by the offer of the post of organist at the newly completed Octagon Chapel in 1767. Yet there were a number of other successful and interesting musicians employed by the chapels, most of which had fine organs and in some cases even choirs.

Herschel gave an introductory concert in the Chapel in January 1767, playing concertos on violin and oboe, and a sonata on the harpsichord. Herschel was invited by Samuel Derrick (Master of Ceremonies) to join the ensembles that played at the Public Subscription Concerts, Pump-Rooms, Balls, the Play Houses, etc. Perhaps because of Herschel’s involvement, a good deal is known about the inauguration and his hiring as organist. The job brought him down from Halifax and catapulted him into Bath’s musical life at time when it was entering its most volatile and unstable period, 1766-1774. Linley was on the rebound from his disappointment at not getting the post of organist at the Abbey on the death of Thomas Chilcot in 1766, and had turned his fire on Samuel Derrick, the Master of Ceremonies, and on Francis Fleming, the leader of the town’s band that played for all the main functions (balls, concerts, pumps rooms, etc).

Herschel, in his notes for Feb 1767, wrote ‘The organ being thus opened, I attended it regularly every Sunday. Dr De Chair intending to introduce Cathedral Services, I had prepared a choir of singers and composed the required music for the purpose, which on account of its simplicity was generally approved of.’ Herschel was an enthusiastic choir trainer and certainly maintained a choir during his time at the Octagon. In my view, the mention of Cathedral music means that he should attempt anthems and the singing of psalms, hymns and canticles in 4-part harmony, as opposed to unison singing or ‘West Gallery’ music with instruments as found in Country Churches.

Herschel’s sister Caroline (1750-1848) assisted with the choir, which originally consisted of young workmen, carpenters with no previous notion of singing – but they were soon ‘able to render the choruses of various oratorios with success’. He also engaged the boys and girls from the Lady Huntingdon’s Chapel for oratorio performances. He again conducted the Messiah at the octagon in the years 1770-71. Parts of the original Snetzler organ survive and are owned by the Herschel Museum in New King’s Street.

The success of the Octagon and the ensuing rivalry between Linley and Herschel may have been the reason that the Margaret Chapel was built in the first place. It was very much a Linley family affair and remained so well into the nineteenth century. William Linley was the builder of the chapel, Thomas Linley the elder, William’s son, was one of the three first proprietors and its first organist. The Chapel gave the mercenary Linley a second source of income for the rest of his life, and Linley’s two surviving sons maintained their interest in the chapel after Thomas’s death in 1795, part owning it and composing music for it in the early nineteenth century. Possibly, Margaret Chapel was built in response to Herschel’s appointment as organist in 1766 – Herschel being a threat to Linley’s domination of the concert life in the city.

Of all the chapels, most is known about the musical activities of the Margaret Chapel, and a fair amount of music survives as a testament to it. Although the other chapels all had organs and organists they probably never rivalled the Margaret it is musical endeavours. We know something of the opening of this chapel through Gainsborough’s letters, as his portrait of Rev.

Dr William Dodd was displayed in Gainsborough’s room in the Circus, in the autumn of 1773, to coincide with

CHOMBEC’s current corresponding members are:

• Yu Lee An (University of Canterbury,

Christchurch, New Zealand) • Richard Barnard (City of Bath) • Kate Bowan (Australian National University,

Canberra) • Suzanne Cole (University of Melbourne) • Alisabeth Concord (Victoria BC, Canada) • Morag Grant (Scotland) • Amanda Haste (France) • Roe-Min Kok (McGill University, Montreal) • Karl Kroeger (USA) • Stephanus Muller (DOMUS, Stellenbosch,

South Africa) • Matthew Spring (Bath Spa University) • Paul Watt (Monash University, Melbourne) • Susan Wollenberg (University of Oxford) • Litong Zhu (People’s Republic of China)

If you would like to enhance CHOMBEC’s representation by becoming a corresponding member for your base in Britain or overseas, please contact the editor. The duties are pleasant: to report from time to time on yourself, your background and work, your environment, your colleagues, and events in your part of the world in relation to their ‘British world’ history or identity.

Interior of the Octagon Chapel c1900

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the opening of Chapel on 3 October 1773. Dodd was a famous preacher, and something of a poet, and is associated with the opening of the chapel as he gave the opening sermon. Dodd was notoriously extravagant, dabbled in forgery and bribery to maintain his lifestyle, and was famously hanged for his crimes in 1777. In a letter to Dodd, Gainsborough wrote ‘I have not neglected the chapel one day, since I took a liking to it, nor don’t mean ever to quit it’. (Susan Sloman, Gainsborough in Bath, 2002, p.106). The Bath Chronicle (26 March 1772 and 15 July 1773) invited subscriptions for pews, and applicants were directed to William Linley in Market Place. Its clientele were those in the Circus, the Royal Crescent and surrounding streets. Linley left Bath in 1774 to manage the musical operations of the Drury Lane Theatre in London and cannot have undertaken the duties of organist for long.

Herschel moved his musical operations from the Octagon to the Margaret chapel in 1776 and maintained his work there until 1782, when he left Bath for the post of Astronomer Royal and life in Slough. Herschel’s own catalogue lists about 100 works for Organ – the majority of which survive as voluntaries, fugues, sonatas , etc. A small amount of service music most probably relates to the Margaret Chapel, as it was found among the organ music that belonged to WJ Windsor, organist from 1798 on the death of Thomas Orpin.

Windsor’s large collection at the Royal College of Music provides an insight into the working music of the chapels. Windsor was a very able keyboardist. He was an early admirer of JS Bach, and copied by hand the music of the 24 preludes and fugues into one of his books as early as 1801, from a source that is not textually related to any surviving source of the work. He also acquired Samuel Wesley’s and Horn’s edition of 1810. Windsor also composed, as there are chants and psalm harmonisations by him in his collection, and settings of the Canticles. He was the organist of the

Margaret Chapel for some 54 years (from 1798 until his death in 1852). His wife Alice, a singer, and daughters Alice, Mary and Elizabeth were all very musical and assisted him in his musical endeavours throughout his ling life. Based at his home in Park Street, he was involved in much of the musical life of the town, as

pianist to the Harmonic Society and

as an important teacher, and he was an avid collector of music. His manuscripts often give information on when and how he acquired his music. He seems to have maintained contact with the remaining two Linleys – William and Osias Thurston, and would have needed the approval of the family to gain the post at the Chapel.

Osias Thurston became organist of Dulwich College and continued to write music for the Margaret Chapel in the early nineteenth century, as did William, as service music in some quantity survives in the Margaret chapel books and titled for use by the chapel. The Linley family portraits now at the Dulwich picture gallery resulted from this connection. The Windsor Collection was one of the first sizeable bequests to the Royal College soon after its inauguration in 1882. Among the large collection of manuscripts associated with his name at the Royal College of Music are to be found a number of autograph manuscripts associated with his long engagement as organist at the Chapel. There are three books that relate directly to the choir (nos. 674, 675 and 676); the first two are organ books, the third a treble part book.

Bath’s Proprietary Chapels are important as venues for music. In the context of the town’s urban environment, they provided a place of worship that was exclusive in that they had to be paid for, and places booked in advance. They were fashionable, comfortable, and provided warm and intimate private spaces for those who could pay to be exclusive. At a time when the music of the Abbey was perhaps at a low ebb, they clearly made a feature of sung services and organ voluntaries. They were used as venues for oratorios and instrumental performances outside of their role as places of worship. Though the churches in Bath certainly aspired to more, Parish church music in the later part of the eighteenth-century could be notoriously perfunctory, and Bath’s ‘pay as you go’ chapels offered music of better standard. Though they all had organs, only the Octagon and Margaret have left us with evidence of choirs. They drew a number of notable musicians to Bath, and gave them a steady income that allowed them to diversify their musical interests.

William Herschel

Don’t forget to keep up with CHOMBEC’s forthcoming events

and news on our website:

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CHOMBEC News

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Music Criticism in Late Nineteenth-Century England

Paul Watt, Monash University

At the end of 2011 I was awarded an Australian Research Council grant for a study entitled ‘Innovation and reform in the theory and practice of musical criticism in late Victorian England to the 1920s’.

The impetus for this project arose while working on a PhD on Ernest Newman. As I trawled the late-nineteenth-century press I kept coming across references in all sorts of periodicals – musical, literary, political, theatrical – about the need for innovation and reform in criticism in all of the arts. The problems of criticism were many and included the view that too much music reporting was based on opinion rather than learning; that anonymous criticism gave too much free reign to critics; that critics needed to be guided by principles in order to formulate a more professional style of criticism, and the need to develop a new and different critical vocabulary. There was also, apparently, corruption in the musical press including bribery, kickbacks and other ‘favours’ in return for laudatory reports on certain composers, librettists and entrepreneurs.

The research will examine a number of areas including:

1. The divide between ‘old school’ and ‘new school’ criticism that emerged around 1880. So far my research has identified the key players as John Stainer, John F Runciman and Ernest Newman. Yet institutions, as well as critics, were involved in fostering the debate, including the Musical Association and Musical Times.

2. Discourse for innovation from sources outside music. The study will draw on articles from approximately sixty periodicals. Probably about a third of these will not be music periodicals, but publications where music was reviewed regularly and in considerable depth.

3. Linking models for new-school criticism derived from French writings. Little has been written on the importance of nineteenth-century French literary critics to both English literary and music criticism, and this part of the project is a significant interdisciplinary foray in understanding the cross-currents in the critical traditions of both countries.

4. Linking this period of reform to the development of Anglophone musicology, including biography. Over the course of the nineteenth century there were at least half a dozen ways in which music criticism was defined; for example, old criticism; aesthetic criticism; scholastic criticism, impressionist criticism. Untangling the competing and confused definitions of these terms will suggest that over the course of the nineteenth century

a particular vocabulary and method of historical writing was forged that eventually transformed journalism into higher criticism and then into musicology.

I am only five months into the project but already it is leading in different directions than planned. Firstly, the literature on vocabularies of criticism is much more extensive than I first thought. Secondly, I have discovered that the networks critics established in the late nineteenth century were truly global, and while I was expecting significant influences from German-speaking critics, and very little influence from, say, North America, I am finding that the opposite is in fact true (at least at the moment). There appears to be significant dialogue between British and North American critics, but not much (so far) of serious engagement with German critics, apart from a few prickly criticisms of Hanslick. Thirdly, I am beginning to discover that the need for the reform of musical criticism was not firstly articulated around 1880, but around 1830, and so the scope of the project is likely to have to cover a larger chunk of the century than I planned.

The project will run for four years with a part-time research assistant (Dr Sarah Collins) funded for three years. The main research outcomes arising from the project are a sole-authored book and a book of essays on nineteenth-century music criticism arising from an international conference towards the end of the grant in 2014 or 2015.

Research Students

Organ Recitals at the Brighton Aquarium

Makiko Hayasaka Nineteenth-century Britain was blessed with a rich secular organ culture, considered by some to be ‘the golden age of organ recitals.’1 Especially after the 1840s, large pipe organs were increasingly common in public buildings serving various purposes, such as town halls, exhibition sites, theatres, and so on, where people enjoyed a series of organ recitals at a reasonably low price. Based on my recent research on the history of secular organ music in Britain, this article will introduce the Brighton Aquarium, a curious example of the organ recital venues of the time.

An image of an organ placed within a row of fish 1 John Henderson, ‘UK Recitals and their Repertoire 1880-1930’ in A Directory of Composers for Organ (Swindon, 1996), p. 907.

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tanks may be peculiar in today’s society, but live music was one of the major factors in Victorian aquaria as mixed amusement centres. The idea had already been seen in the aquarium of the Crystal Palace, opened in Sydenham in 1871, two years ahead of the Brighton Aquarium. Since the Crystal Palace aquarium was added to the north end of the main glass building, visitors could easily move around between the aquarium and other facilities, such as a restaurant, reading room, dance room, and concert hall. Following the immense success of the Crystal Palace aquarium, the Brighton Aquarium was designed to be a recreational marine exhibit on the largest scale of the day. Taking three years to complete, and costing over £130,000, the Italianate building was erected adjacent to the cliff surface (at the west end of what is now Madeira Drive) and topped off with a promenade. The facilities included a billiards room, rifle gallery, reading space, smoking room, dining room, conservatory, gardens, and even a roller skating rink. The atmosphere of the aquarium was described as follows: ‘The beautiful scenery in the building itself, the marvellous sights in the tanks, the delicious music floating through the air, the literal crowning of the edifice with the beautiful gardens combined to make the place more thoroughly productive of real pleasure than any other amusement resort.’2 Mixing the solemnity of the building, the dim light through glass tanks, curious sea creatures (a speciality of this aquarium was an octopus), the sound of waterfalls and pleasant music all together, the aquarium must have been filled with a mysterious and exciting feeling.

The aquarium had a music director, who took command of music making in the building. Under his supervision, a band played promenade concerts at the entrance every day, star players were called from London to perform in diverse programmes, from solo recitals to operettas, and regional organists gave daily organ recitals. Although the exact process of the organ installation is unknown, it seems that the instrument with two manuals and nineteen stops was built by a local organ company, Messrs. Harper Bros, presumably around by the time of aquarium’s opening. Strangely, the position of the organ is not specified in the floor plan, but from two photos preserved in the Brighton History Centre it would appear that the organ was placed in the entrance hall.

2 ‘Brighton Aquarium,’ http://www.yosp.com, May 2012.

The aquarium had established regular organ recitals by 1880. According to concert booklets of 1884, organ recitals were normally held twice a day: one in the late afternoon, at 4.30 or 5 pm, and the other in the evening at 7 or 8 pm. What draws attention to Brighton’s organ recital programmes is that dance music of Waldteufel and Clendon is often included along with the works of Handel, Mendelssohn and Bach, which were dominant in most public organ recitals at that time. Waldteufel’s waltzes enjoyed considerable popularity during the 1870s and 1880s in Britain, but they were rarely heard in organ recitals. The frequent appearance of light dance music in the Brighton programmes suggests the nature of the aquarium recitals as background music for passing visitors rather than as serious concerts for attentive listeners. People might have even danced with waltzes played on the organ; in fact, some old postcards of the aquarium depict people dancing in the entrance hall, although they do not show the organ.

Shortly after the turn of the century the organ was removed from the aquarium, after its novelty had worn off and its popularity waned. But dance music played on the organ continued in ballrooms, which became a principal venue for secular organ culture in the twentieth century. Organ recitals at aquaria were a prototype for this, flourishing briefly at the end of the nineteenth century. Makiko Hayasaka is pursuing doctoral research at the University of Bristol (‘Developments in the Secularisation and Popularisation of Organ Culture in Britain, 1890-1945')

The Brighton Aquarium, c1873 Photograph reproduced with the kind permission of the

Royal Pavilion & Museum (Brighton & Hove)

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Review

Nicholas Temperley and Stephen Banfield, eds, Music and the Wesleys (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,

2010)

Sam Allchurch The idea of a musical family is an appealing one, as it raises questions about influence, progression and the development of an art form: this publication surveys the far-reaching influence of such a family, the Wesleys. As explained in the editor’s preface, this book originated in a conference, Music, Cultural History and the Wesleys, hosted by CHOMBEC at the University of Bristol in July 2007, marking the tercentenary of Charles Wesley’s birth. This collection of essays examines the different members of this extraordinary family from musical, cultural and theological perspectives, adding to Erik Routley’s seminal text The Musical Wesleys (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968). Given the similarity in names of different members of the family (two Samuels and two Charleses), the family tree at the start of the book is very useful. The book is attractively presented although personally, I would have preferred footnotes to endnotes.

The book is divided into two parts, ‘Music and Methodism’ and ‘The Wesley Musicians’: the first is concerned with the influence of the older generation of Wesleys (John and Charles) on religious life in England and further abroad, while the second part focuses on the musical activities of the family in specific cultural contexts. The collection has a broad focus, in terms of the extended period of time, the variety of different individuals examined, and the nature of the discussion. While this publication appears to be intended for academic readers, it does not assume specialist knowledge of all the background discourses (theological, denominational, etc.) that are invoked. The diversity of approach means that some chapters will appeal to individual readers more than others (I found the second part, which covers a greater range of issues, more immediately accessible than the first), but it has the advantage of encouraging the examination of music in a variety of different contexts.

Nicholas Temperley’s opening chapter (‘John Wesley, Music, and the People Called Methodists’) examines the origins of Methodism and the musical views of its founder, John Wesley. It provides useful

background on the central place of hymnody within the Methodist movement, which forms the focus of the essays in the first part. Noted hymnologist JR Watson provides a thoughtful examination of the inherently musical nature of Charles Wesley’s texts, explaining how the poetry expresses theological points about worship on earth. In contrast, Robin A Leaver approaches hymnody from a functional perspective: ‘Psalms and Hymns and Hymns and Sacred Poems: Two Strands of Wesleyan Hymn Collections’ examines the difference between hymns designed for weekly meetings of the Methodist societies and those which were designed for use within the context of the structure and content of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Martin V Clarke offers a fascinating insight into the first collection of hymn tunes by a single composer associated with the Methodist movement, in ‘John Frederick Lampe’s Hymns on the Great Festivals and Other Occasions’. By examining the publication from liturgical, textual and musical perspectives, Clarke provides a wholly rounded approach to hymnody, elucidating the use and impact of Lampe’s collection.

In a move away from hymnody, Sally Drage discusses another form of liturgical music, the curious hybrid genre of the ‘set piece’, which she describes as ‘an anthem with a metrical text instead of prose’. Drage traces its development from early examples of John Wesley’s hymn tunes to orchestrated oratorios in the style of Handel. She concludes that the set piece in this later, more complex form does not conform with John Wesley’s original emphasis on congregational singing.

The collection then crosses the Atlantic and offers insights into the musical impact of Methodism in America. In ‘The Music of Methodism in Nineteenth-Century America’, Anne Bagnall Yardley examines the link between music and the development of Methodism in nineteenth-century America, and how Methodist communities established their own particular musical customs in line with the broader religious beliefs of the movement. The title of Geoffrey C Moore’s chapter, ‘Eucharistic Piety in American Methodist Hymnody (1786–1889)’, catches the attention, as Eucharistic piety is not the first characteristic of Methodism that normally springs to mind. Moore provides a clear explanation, however, of the expression of sacramental theology (and especially its sacrificial implications) in hymnody, which John and Charles Wesley sought to promote in Hymns on the Lord’s Supper. Moore observes that American Methodists chose not to adopt this sacramental emphasis in their theological beliefs and worshipping life. Carlton R Young’s ‘The Musical Settings of Charles Wesley’s Hymns (1742 to 2008)’ is unique in the collection in its focus on the development of musical expression of original Wesley texts and the relevance of those texts to contemporary worshipping communities. This brief chapter traces developments across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in

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England and America and includes a number of well chosen musical examples.

Stephen Banfield’s ‘Style, Will, and the Environment: Three Composers at Odds with History’ begins the second part, ‘The Wesley Musicians’, and covers the most temporal ground, assessing the life and work of three generations of the Wesley family: Charles the Younger, Samuel and Sebastian. Banfield combines biographical information and musical analysis seamlessly and presents interesting insights into the public perception of the younger two primarily as performers, rather than composers. The analysis of Sebastian’s music covers his sacred output as well as his lesser-known secular compositions, offering a pleasantly holistic approach.

Jonathan Barry focuses on the relationship between the lives of Charles the Younger and Samuel Wesley and the city of Bristol, which, at the time of their upbringing, was England’s second largest city in terms of economic prosperity and political weight. Barry offers a thorough explanation of the musical activities that formed two significant English composers, emphasizing how their parents (Charles and Sarah) sought to keep them away from the ‘bawdy world of music’ and raise them in ‘the religious and moral values of the “godly”’. The relationship between the sacred and the secular in this case is examined on a personal, familial level, offering a refreshingly different perspective from the usual large-scale corporate approach.

Peter S Forsaith’s detailed account of the John Russell portraits of Samuel and Charles Wesley, which now hang in the Duke’s Hall in the Royal Academy of Music, is something of an anomaly as the only iconographical discussion in the book. Forsaith suggests hypotheses concerning the expression of the Wesley family values in the portraits: the social value of these portraits is clear, while the musical link seems more elusive. Alyson McLamore presents a cogent analysis of

the concert series that Charles Wesley established in his home in London to showcase the talents of his two sons, Charles and Samuel. Wesley documented all aspects of the concerts fastidiously, leaving behind the most complete record of concert series in the eighteenth century. McLamore examines the administration of the concerts, the selection of repertoire and the impact the concerts had on the family dynamic, and especially on tensions surrounding moral issues. In light of this, the chapter would have been a good continuation to Barry’s examination of similar issues the family encountered in Bristol: the intervening chapter on the portraits of the sons is chronologically confusing in its existing position.

Following clearly from this is Philip Olleson’s analysis of the relationship between the father and his two prodigiously musical sons: Charles the Younger’s intense musical experiences throughout childhood removed any desire to pursue a professional career as a performer, while Samuel’s attitude was more ambivalent. Olleson offers psychological insights into Samuel’s erratic behaviour and complex relationship with Roman Catholicism (to which he eventually converted in 1784).

After a set of biographically focused chapters, Peter Holman’s examination of Samuel Wesley’s interest in old styles of composition is a welcome shift to more musically focused discussion. Holman situates Wesley’s antiquarian interests within a longer tradition of English musical antiquarianism, reaching back to Purcell and Blow, and explains how stylistic diversity became a chief characteristic of Samuel’s composition. Holman illustrates this diversity in the vocal and instrumental works with musical examples and concludes by claiming that ‘stylistic diversity was an expression of London’s advanced cultural life, where the past had been discovered and embraced in most intellectual and artistic fields earlier than in other European centers’.

Peter Horton’s ‘The Anthem Texts and Word Setting of Sebastian Wesley’ is entirely sacred in its reference and charts the development of Sebastian Wesley’s selection and setting of texts for anthems intended for liturgical use with the Church of England. Horton explains how Wesley’s approach was broader than the prevailing custom of setting psalm texts as anthems, examples of which can be found in the works of Wesley’s contemporary, John Goss, organist of St Paul’s Cathedral, and later by John Stainer. Through Horton’s analysis of successive anthems, the reader is shown the successive broadening of texts, ranging from selections of large portions of the one biblical text, through to a combination of different biblical passages and then the mixture of biblical and non-biblical texts. This survey is fascinating and well presented and was, for me, the highlight of the book.

The editors offer the final chapter as a reflection on the contemporary relevance of the last member of the

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family, focusing on Sebastian Wesley’s sacred output and its performance in Anglican choral institutions, bringing this collection of essays to a more contemporary conclusion. This publication is a

worthwhile addition to the literature on the Wesley family and the Methodist movement, and presents insights on biographical, historical, theological, cultural and musical levels.

Forthcoming events relating to music in Britain,

the Empire and the Commonwealth

25-28 July 2012 North American British Music Studies Association (NABMSA) Fifth Biennial Conference, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. The theme of the conference is Anglo-American music and musical relationships. www.nabmsa.org 7 September 2012 The Journey of Music(s): Colonial Music Practice in the Age of Enlightenment, Georg-August University, Göttingen, Germany Part of the international conference ‘Music/Musics. Structures and Processes’, 4-8 September 2012. Conference programme at www.uni-goettingen.de/de/355807.html

13-14 September 2012 Music and Politics in Britain and Italy, 1933-1968, King’s College London Britain and Italy have tended to reside at the edge of musical historiography during this period, sidelined by the centrality traditionally afforded Germany and France. How did political events affect musical culture during this period? Can a comparative study of Italy and Britain reveal more about what it meant for music to be politicised during and after the Second World War? www.musicandpolitics.org.uk 5-6 October 2012 Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: A Centennial Celebration, University of Houston, USA. Will include concerts and papers. www.uh.edu/class/music/events-performances/sctfest/index.php

24-27 June 2013 Ninth Biennial International Conference on Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain, University of Cardiff http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/music/newsandevents/events/conferences/13MNCB/index.html 5-7 July 2013 Benjamin Britten on Stage and Screen, University of Nottingham http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/music/events/benjamin-britten-on-stage-and-screen.aspx 19-21 September 2013 RMA Annual Conference 2013, Institute of Musical Research, London http://www.rma.ac.uk/conferences/event.asp?id=462

CHOMBEC events will be updated on our website:

www.bristol.ac.uk/music/chombec